So, those who were before them gave the lie, that is, [so] the deniers gave the lie to messengers before them by making their disbelief [as something] dependent on the will of God, out of obduracy and recalcitrance, and they were [indeed] chastised for their disbelief. Say: 'Have you any knowledge, such that you can adduce for us?, that is to say, if you were to have any knowledge or proof of that, then illustrate [it]. He says this by way of allusion to their statement 'Had God willed, we would not have been idolaters [Q. 6:148], for had they said that on the basis of some [factual] knowledge, they would have known that the faith of those who believe in the Oneness [of God] and everything else only comes to be through the will of God. So on the basis of what are they [the deniers] hostile to them when they [the believers] have not rejected them, but even associated with them until there remained no disagreement between them and the believers. By God, had they said that out of knowledge, they would not have actually been idolaters, nay, rather affirmers of Oneness. But they followed supposition regarding that and based themselves on estimation (taqdīr) and conjecture, their purpose being denial and recalcitrance; and what they have heard from the messengers constitutes an indictment of them and proof that they are not prevented from [the call of] the messengers. [All of that is] because they are veiled at the station of the soul: whence certainty for them then and how could they know what God's will might be?